


and she will save you but she cannot love you

by dCryptid



Category: Borderlands
Genre: F/M, Unrequited Love, haha wow I am really bad at tags, krieg's inner voice is a dick, relationship tag is inaccurate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 02:18:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1572443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dCryptid/pseuds/dCryptid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Krieg drew to a halt in front of Maya, who was looking up at him with clear eyes. A phaselock orb hovered in front of her, and she continued to sustain it as he struggled to form some semblance of a coherent sentence.</p><p>	“Pretty lady,” he finally managed, spitting the phrase out fiercely. </p><p>	Maya’s expression didn’t change, although she let the orb of dark energy consume itself and disappear. “What do you want, Krieg?” she asked quietly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and she will save you but she cannot love you

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really terrible at tags and I'm sorry oops. But this was inspired by a very small note in something the Borderlands Facebook page posted - on Krieg's "Loverpalooza" card (the one where they give you the shift code to actually get the skin) there's some text from him saying that "the blue girl pushed him away" and it really got me thinking into how that might have gone.
> 
> I love Krieg/Maya so this hurts me. But here you go.

               Thick clouds of Pandoran dust kicked up around Krieg’s heavy boots as he strode restlessly about the Arid Badlands. The eerie purple glow of the slag puddles shone across the near-barren landscape – dusk was on its way, but it would be hours yet before it reached the dimmest part of the night. He and his companions had set up a rough camp in the shadow of a towering cliff, and Krieg stayed within sight of it as he meandered back and forth across the wasteland.

               The other five Vault Hunters were clustered together near the cliff face, close to each other but clearly separate. They were silent; the bond they had was tentative, united as they were by a common goal and little else except a penchant for being exceptionally deadly.

               As Krieg looked at them, he felt a fountain of bloodlust begin to bubble in his chest, but it was quickly cut off. _They may not be innocents, but their intentions are better than most. Let them be, or you know the consequences._

               Krieg growled and looked away, muttering something incomprehensible to himself as he shook his head and randomly jerked his limbs, shaking the redness out of his thoughts. He distracted himself for a while by tossing his heavy buzz axe from hand to hand, but it wasn’t long before his eyes were creeping back over to the group by the cliff, focusing on one member in particular.

               The blue girl. _Maya,_ the second voice interjected. _She has a name. Learn to use it, already._ Krieg growled again, his gaze never leaving Maya’s lean form. She was reclined against a boulder, one long leg crossed over the other as she created miniature phaselock orbs in the air before her. Krieg could see the pebbles that surrounded her jitter every time she summoned a sphere of darkness, and how they stilled when it dissipated.

               “Blood heart juice pumps red,” Krieg grumbled, crouching down to dig at the dirt with the handle of his axe. “Hot hot red.”

               _She is beautiful, isn’t she?_ the other agreed. _Really something else._

               Krieg picked up a pebble and studied it for a moment before chucking it off into the distance. “Vomit emotions into the black black forever darkness. Get them out getthemout get them oooooout!” He ferociously dug the serrated teeth of his axe into the dirt and left it there, breathing heavily.

               The other was silent for a long moment. _You want to tell her how you feel. How_ we _feel._

               “Yes yes yes yesyes yesssssss.” A surprisingly articulate answer – likely not much more than pure coincidence, but the affirmation was genuine.

               _You remember how well that went last time, buddy? Cause I sure as hell do._ Krieg stood up straight and pried his axe out of the dirt, slinging it back over his shoulder. The other sighed heavily. _If you’re so determined, you might as well. Why embarrass yourself later when you can make an ass of yourself now?_

               Krieg grunted. “Rip your face off and watch your bones smile,” he said conversationally. _Yeah, fuck you too, pal._

With long, shambling strides, Krieg began making his way over to his companions, kicking at the ground with his heels and muttering short, senseless phrases as he went. Gaige was the first to see him coming – she was at the outermost edges of the group, elbow-deep in Deathtrap’s electronic innards. “Hey dude,” she said nervously, withdrawing her hands from the robot’s chest cavity. In one of them she held the wrench that usually dangled among the many tools on her belt, and she was clearly prepared to use it as a melee weapon if necessary.

               _They don’t trust you at all,_ the other said as Krieg stalked right by the petite roboteer. _Even after all we’ve been through. They don’t trust each other, either, but they’d all band against you in a heartbeat if they thought they needed to._

               Krieg snorted and shook his head, stomping past Axton and Salvador, who were both propped against the base of the same boulder. Axton tucked his hands up behind his head as Krieg passed him, and Salvador lifted his chin up from his chest, both of them watching the tall psycho with wary eyes. Zero was more distant, standing some feet away with his back to the rest of the party. He looked over his shoulder, expressionless helmet reflecting the purple of the slag puddles, then back away with a clearly audible, heavily filtered “humph.”

               Krieg drew to a halt in front of Maya, who was looking up at him with clear eyes. A phaselock orb hovered in front of her, and she continued to sustain it as he struggled to form some semblance of a coherent sentence.

               “Pretty lady,” he finally managed, spitting the phrase out fiercely. _Nice start._

               Maya’s expression didn’t change, although she let the orb of dark energy consume itself and disappear. “What do you want, Krieg?” she asked quietly.

               Krieg had managed to tell the rest of the Vault Hunters his name – Maya had asked him, and it had taken much struggling and many false proclamations before he had finally screamed “KRIEG!” at the top of his lungs, turning on a nearby pup skag and tearing it to pieces with his bare hands. Most of his companions still refused to address him directly, though, and Maya was the only one who ever bothered to actually call him by name.

               Krieg growled, kicking at the dirt as he struggled again with expressing what was on his mind. _Ask her to go for a walk with you. Tell her that the slag puddles are beautiful at dusk and you’d like to go look at them with her. Just say_ something, _and don’t you dare confess right in front of everyone else – I don’t know if they can find you any crazier but I don’t want to find out._

               After a long moment of strained silence, Krieg simply turned away, jerking his head at her follow. “You want me to come with you?” Maya asked, and Krieg grunted, managing a single affirmative nod before it turned into a violent head-shaking. He clutched the sides of his skull to steady himself, scrunching up his eyes in discomfort and furious concentration.

               Maya pushed to her feet, glancing over at Axton, who was looking at her intently with his hands planted in the dust as if he was about to stand up as well. “It’s fine,” she told him quietly, shaking her head. She squared her shoulders and crossed her arms as she turned to Krieg. “Lead the way, then,” she said, in a tone of voice that made it very clear she would tolerate no funny business.

               Krieg’s whole body jerked, starting with his head and moving down his body, before he began walking out back towards the open badlands, Maya following a few paces behind. Gaige eyed them as they passed by her, still holding her wrench like a weapon.

               They walked out into the desert, Krieg stopping every two dozen paces or so to twitch and mutter disconnected strings of words. At one point, he yanked his buzz axe off his back and chucked it out into the gathering dimness, and Maya waited as he stomped off to retrieve it.

               “I think we’ve gone far enough,” she said when he returned. “So tell me what you want, or I head back with or without you.” Her gaze was stern and level, and she stood tall and straight, planted firmly in the Pandoran dust.

               Krieg threw his axe down to the ground where it stuck, blade-first and quivering from the impact. He stood, slouched but still massive, with his huge hands dangling at his sides, trembling.

               _Come on, buddy,_ said the other. _Just tell her she’s beautiful. Tell her she’s an angel of death and you’ve never seen anything so magnificent in your entire life. Say that – say that you love her._

We _love her. Because we do._

Krieg jerked his head to the side and snarled, the trembling in his hands becoming more pronounced. “Guts,” he began, each word ejected from his mouth with a visible effort. “Guts roil up in my chest like fire, burning, burning, burning, all the babies, all of them.” He was rambling, getting distracted by his own words and following them off in random directions. “Everyone, everything, beautiful, perfect, destroy it all, I am the destroyer, ME!” The final word was a roar, punctuated by him slamming a meaty fist into his chest. His breathing was raspy, strained, and a sense of panic was rising in his throat.

               Maya still watched him steadily, unmoving, but a faint light of fear had kindled in her eyes. _Nice. Real fuckin nice._

               “No, no,” Krieg snarled, grabbing the sides of his head and shaking it fiercely, fingernails digging into mask and scalp alike. “ _You._ You are the destroyer, the final wash of blood across this empty nothingness, you, I heard it on my brain radio! I heard it in the darkest part of the night! I heard it and I don’t even have any headphones!”

               _How hard is it? How hard is it to say three little words? I. Love. You. Say it. Just_ fucking _say it!_

               Maya took a step backwards. “I’m going to go,” she said, turning back towards the camp.

               _She’s leaving. This is your last chance. Say it!_ The other was furious, his voice losing its usual calm tone as it built up to a roar. _I don’t even know if you can hear me right now, but if you can you’d better pull it together and SAY IT!_

               “Wait,” Krieg choked, the word barely more than a croak, and Maya froze in her tracks.

               “Wait,” he said again, reaching out one huge hand and placing it on her shoulder. She jerked, yanking her shoulder out of his grasp as she whirled back to face him, fear and alarm showing clear on her face.

               Krieg fell to his knees in front of her, the fingers of one hand still digging into his scalp. He was starting to bleed, ragged fingernails carving open his skin. “Pl…please,” he stammered, and Maya stared, hands clutched in front of her chest.

               _Not good enough,_ the other said, and he was done watching, done talking, surging forward, wrestling for control. He dug his fingers under the edge of Krieg’s mask, ripping it off as Maya watched in horror.

               The first breath of unfiltered Pandoran air was like acid in his lungs, and he choked, vision blurring from the pain. He fell forward, meaty palms slamming into the hard ground as his mask skittered away out of reach. He reeled, almost collapsing, but managed to haul himself back and look up at Maya – the beautiful Siren girl who had finally given him a chance to be something other than what he had become. Her hands were clasped over her mouth. He’d never seen her look so scared before. Was it the scars? Was it the twisted, misshapen cavern where his right eye had once resided? He didn’t know. He didn’t care.

               He drew another shuddering, agonizing breath, and thought he was going to pass out from the pain. He was on fire, burning from the inside out, but all he could see was her. The blue girl. Pretty lady.

               “Maya,” he choked out, barely more than a gasp, and collapsed.

               He was barely aware of her falling to her knees in front of him as he took a third breath – ice, agony, like swallowing the sun itself – before he felt something slip over his face, and the next crackling breath he drew did not, for some reason, burn.

               He rolled over onto his back, arms dead weight flopping into the dust, and opened his eyes. Maya was hovering over him, and he was suddenly aware of the sensation of one of her delicate hands cupping the back of his head. She had placed his mask back over his face and was holding it there as she regarded him with her wide, almost colorless eyes. There was still fear in them – but there was understanding, too.

               _She knows,_ the other said, quietly. _She knows now. And she doesn’t feel the same._

               Krieg lifted his hands and began to re-buckle the straps of his mask, even though his hands felt like they had been dipped in lead and now weighed a thousand pounds each. One of them brushed against the hand Maya was using to support the back of his skull, and the corner of her mouth twitched upwards, just a little.

               _Why would she? How could I even imagine that she would? I must be as crazy as you, buddy, I really gotta be._

               But Krieg wasn’t listening anymore, and he dropped his hands back into the dust. Maya left hers where they were, her eyebrows knitted in an unfathomable, slightly pained expression.

               “Sorry,” Krieg croaked, and the word was all him.

               “Me too,” she replied, and gently laid his head down on the ground before standing up. She looked down at him, a towering vision of something unnamable and beautiful, and seemed to be about to say something else. But she stopped herself, and gave him a small, uncomfortable smile before turning and walking back to camp, her arms crossed over her chest.

               Krieg lay in the dirt for a while longer, the last rays of the Pandoran daylight slipping over him before disappearing completely, leaving the badlands in the washed-out dimness that counted as the Pandoran night.

               _Could it really have gone any other way?_

**Author's Note:**

> So this is really rich in personal headcanons, namely the mask thing, which I think you can figure out from context. But basically I imagine Krieg as being horrifically disfigured under the mask, and actually needs the ventilator to protect his damaged lungs - think Bane a la "The Dark Night Rises," in a way. I also have a lot of fun with Inner Krieg, as you might have noticed. I don't think of him as the most standup guy, contrary to what the in-game dialogue would have you think - he was still a killer, and I really see him as being pretty selfish and sick of never having any control, never getting what he wants. Krieg may be crazy but Inner Krieg is something of an asshole, despite his loudly voiced moral objections to everything.
> 
> This was interesting to write and I hope you liked it, and that I didn't scare anyone too badly. Thanks for reading!


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